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"What a liar! Am not! Are so! Not me, you are! Am not! Are so!" On the playground of politics, a dubious interpretation quickly becomes a false statement, which quickly becomes a deliberate lie, rating "four Pinocchios," or "pants on fire."

Those who issue the ratings, such as the Washington Post, home of Pinocchio ratings, and the Poynter Institute's PolitiFact service, home of "pants on fire" ratings, have been throwing wood on the political bonfire. Once such terminology may have seemed cute; now it's destructive to both parties, to the electorate, and to the country.

The original outfit of this type, FactCheck.org, may have hoped to make political discourse more mature, forcing campaigns to be better grounded on facts, distinguished from opinion. FactCheck continues to provide in-depth reporting and restrained, reasoned evaluations. Some others are just making points. Does the Romney-Ryan ticket have more Pinocchios than the Obama-Biden team? Don't ask; don't let them tell you.

It's time for headline-seekers to change their terminology. These might be better categories: true, not clearly explained, needs extensive footnoting, a matter of opinion.

No issue has been more dubious for fact-checking than the issue of the $716 billion to be saved, deducted, or stolen from Medicare by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a legislative title requiring many footnotes that's also known as Obamacare).

Republicans have been calling the reduction of spending increases, to be taken over 10 years, not merely a cut but a theft.

Democrats say it's not theft or even a cut in patient benefits. They say legitimate cost-cutting measures will reduce waste in Medicare but not harm patients, who will continue to be entitled to every kind of care they need. It will only reduce Medicare's payments to physicians and hospitals.

Republicans retort that cutting payments will reduce the incentives for health-care providers to treat Medicare patients.

Democrats note that the budget plan advanced by vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan would make the same Medicare cuts, and use the proceeds to cut taxes for the rich.

Ryan scolds Obama for ignoring the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles (or Bowles-Simpson for Democrats) commission, but Democrats add that Ryan was on the commission and voted against its recommendations (as did three other Republicans and four Democrats). Ryan and his allies explain they thought the commission plan did not go far enough to control Medicare spending; Democrats respond that the Republicans' chief concern was living up to their pledges never to raise any taxes.

These statements have an almost admirable slipperiness. Each is true as far as it goes, but leaves out an important point made in the counter-statement. They are all true and they are all false, perfectly reflecting the nature of politics and politicians.

Advice to partisans of all stripes: By all means be suspicious, even cynical, about the claims of politicians you don't like. But don't assume the worst; don't call them liars. And be especially careful about evaluating the claims of your favorite pols; keep your distance from any that call a candidate a liar.

Without doubt, there are baldfaced lies and liars in politics. This year may even be worse than some other years. But yelling about lies and accusing liars is a sick substitute for telling the truth.

The Facebook Lesson

Investors learn again there is no risk-free IPO

Facebook stock was quoted last week more than 50% below its $38 share price at its May 18 initial public offering. Lots of speculators feel cheated, being deprived of their right to a quick and easy profit—at the expense of those other speculators who were supposed to come in later and pay a higher price.

The employees who received gifts of restricted stock, which could not be sold for 90 days after the IPO, had to watch helplessly as the share price peaked and then fell. Founder Mark Zuckerberg would have been worth $16.8 billion if he could have sold on the IPO; now he's worth a lousy $8.4 billion, and he has been forced to say he won't sell any shares for the next year so as not to drive the price down even more.

Some claim that Facebook's investment bankers, led by Morgan Stanley, screwed up by pricing the stock too high. Others blame Zuckerberg and his chief financial officer for drinking their own Kool-Aid and pushing too many shares out the door at too high a price.

Other alleged malfeasants and misfeasors include the Nasdaq Stock Market, or its computer programmers, the astrologers who set the date of the IPO, the analysts who may have had word of problems and repeated the warning, and their anonymous sources inside the company that did the leaking in advance of Facebook's first quarterly report. Lawsuits have been filed.

Speculators expected Facebook shares to rise and rise, so that they would be able to sell their shares to the proverbial "greater fool." Anyone who plays that game should know that somebody always has to be the greatest fool, buying the stock for the highest price. As they say in poker, "If you don't know who the fish is, it's you."

Maybe Facebook didn't really need the capital; that doesn't mean the company and its bankers should have rigged the market.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro has played a part in this, asking her staff to review the antihype rule that requires companies to gag themselves before IPOs. At any other time, this would be a good step in the direction of restoring free speech. But Schapiro's timing, and her comments in a letter to a nosy congressman, make it seem that she thinks that all Facebook needed was a little more hype.

Initial public offerings without risk are not found in nature, and SEC rules can't conjure them into existence. The Facebook fiasco taught players a valuable lesson, and investors should be glad it happened.